According to First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, "the domestic Air Fleet has been and will remain a source of strength and might of the state, and an object of respect and pride of Russians."

"This is vindicated by the fact that today, thousands of highly skilled specialists continue and augment the traditions of their predecessors, by contributing, in all ways, to the boosting of prestige and authority of the Russian Air Fleet," Ivanov said in a telegam congratulating the personnel and veterans of this branch of industry.

The most important thing now is "to secure transport accessibility to all Russian regions. It is a developed system of mainline aviation communication that ensures, to a considerable extent, the country's economic and socio-political unity," Transport Minister Igor Levitin said in his telegram marking the occasion.

Air traffic in Russia intensified by 13 percent in the first half of this year.

The actively developing United Aircraft Corporation /UAC/ is planning to build 250 billion dollars of planes of all types by 2025.

The corporation intends to manufacture some 300 civil planes annually, 100 transport planes and some 100 warplanes.

It aims to manufacture 4,500 planes until 2025.

Earlier, Ivanov said the aircraft industry had reported a 30-percent growth in the first half of the year.

The UAC is expected to spend one billion U.S. dollars on modernization. The Gorbunov Kazan Aircraft Production Association will join the United Aircraft Corporation before the end of the summer of 2007.

The corporation will also expand the range of the planes it makes, including Tupolev strategic bombers that are made in Kazan.

Tashkent's Chkalov Aircraft Company will join the UAC, too.

In Soviet times, Chkalov Aircraft Company was the only plant that made wide-bodied aircraft. It was created in 1932 in Khimki outside of Moscow and moved to Tashkent in 1941.

The planes to be made by the UAC will vary in size and the number of seats. They will include long-range, medium-range and regional planes, specifically, Il-96, Il-76, Tu-204, Tu-214, Tu-334, An-148 and Superjet-100, produced by the Sukhoi Firm.

"We realize we shall have to stand tough competition with foreign producers, but we do not want to lose the Russian market, and we shall do our best for the Russian air companies to have at their disposal reliable and comfortable air liners," UAC head Alexei Fyodorov stressed.

He said earlier that the fifth-generation plane was scheduled to make its maiden flight in 2009.

"At this moment technical documentation is being developed. This part of the project is being accomplished in keeping with the expected schedule," he said.

"There are very many complicated phases ahead, including that of mastering the production of dramatically new constructions and materials, including composite ones. These are going to be rather complicated processes and they are very hard to predict," the unified aircraft corporation chief said. "It is hard for me to say at this point whether the plane will certainly go up in the air in 2009, or a little bit later. One can be more certain about that when the production process proper is underway."

Fyodorov said all avionics in that plane would be of Russian manufacture.

"As far as the project is concerned, this is going to be the most research intense and time-consuming phase," he said. "The airframe and the platform are much made faster than the equipment they are 'stuffed with.'"

MOSCOW, August 19 (Itar-Tass)